Tuesday, May 24, 2011

This past weekend, I raced the Capital City Crit in Lincoln, NE with five other Cat 3 Midwest Cycling Community teammates. We were by far the largest team out there of any race. With a large team like that, you have a lot of cards to play, and we used just about every one of them. In the end, I won the race, teammate Ryan Feagan won the field sprint and our team took both premes. Not a bad day's work.

In fact, it was Ryan Feagan who tweeted about working with the MWCC team pre-race,

and I'm excited to work with a team during a crit! @TrekO_Midtown represent

I couldn't have put it any better. As a newbie to cat 3 racing, I haven't had the opportunity to truly race with a team until now. For any of the cat 4 or 5s out there reading this, it does make a huge difference when you've got teammates working with you. It's almost like having insurance. I had the confidence throughout the race that if each of us did our part, though some of our individual efforts might fail to stick, our team's chance for a successful outcome was very good.

Here's my perspective of how the race went down.

Bryan Redemske (MWCC) drilled it from the whistle for the first couple laps. The field was strung out single-file and I was tail gunner. Then the attacks came. When our team sent Lucas Marshal, Team Kaos/Allegent Health chased him down. Then Kaos launched a counter, and we'd have Bryan Redemske or Matt Tillinghast pull him back.

Then at some point, it was my turn. I got away right as John Lefler Jr called a preme lap. The jump I got on the peleton gave me a comfortable margin to win that preme and stay away for another lap before being brought back in. But by then, we had Eric O'Brien, Lucas and Ryan Feagan well rested to go off the front once more.

About half way through the race, it was my turn to attack again. With Tillinghast on the front and Redemske third wheel, I just rode away from the peloton. When I was away, I punched it hard for a lap. Again, I was by myself. On the next lap, Nathan Hicks (Team EMU/Zealous) and Logan Evans (Univ North Dakota) bridged. Then came Vaughn Pierce (KAOS/Allegent Health). There was 30 minutes to go. We had a gap of 15 seconds on the peloton. Although none of us were sure at the time, this was the break that was going to stick.

On the final lap, Logan Evans turned on the gas. I jumped on his wheel. We came around the final corner and Logan stood to sprint, but his final burst was to be short lived. The dude just put out some massive wattage pulling us around that last lap and much of the break. In the end, I was able to sling around him and take the line with Pierce and Hicks nipping behind.

celebrating with a victory punch

Ryan Feagan wins field sprint

In retrospect, I ended up where I was in large (if not most) part due to my team. I attacked three times: the preme lap, the successful break and then on the final sprint. In between those efforts, I had the support of my team to help recover the legs, but more importantly, the peace of mind in knowing that if I should fail, there'd be another one of us to fill the void. And on that day, with our collective strength, it could have been any of my teammates.

Thanks goes out to the Lincoln's Bike Pedalers for hosting the races and to John Lefler Jr for calling them. Lefler does a great job keeping it exciting. But most of all, thanks goes out to my MWCC teammates.